How to find the appropriate value for the 'String specifying the time zone' option of Host Profiles

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information on the String specifying the time zone option of Host Profiles that is used to specify NTP time servers for your environment when configuring a fixed time zone.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x

Resolution

The clocks in the ESX/ESXi hosts must be synchronized to maintain coordinated logs for the service console and virtual machines. Setting the String specifying the time zone option on the host profile ensures that all your hosts use the same time zone.

Valid time zone values are based on the tz (timezone) database used by Linux and other Unix systems. These values are generally strings that are in the format <area>/<Location>, where:

• <area> is a continent or ocean name. Areas currently includes:
  • Africa
  • America (both North America and South America)
  • Antarctica
  • Arctic
  • Asia
  • Atlantic
  • Australia
  • Europe
  • Etc (administrative zone. For example, "Etc/UTC" represents Coordinated Universal Time).
  • Indian
  • Pacific
    
    
• <Location> is the city, Island, or other regional name.

The time zones and output abbreviations adhere to POSIX (portable operating system interface) UNIX conventions, which use positive (+) signs west of Greenwich and negative (-) signs east of Greenwich., which is the opposite of what is generally expected. For example, Etc/GMT+4 corresponds to 4 hours behind UTC (that is, west of Greenwich) rather than 4 hours ahead of UTC.

To see the list of valid <area>/<Location> pairs, see Valid timeZone Values.